The present invention relates to lighting instruments and, more particularly, a lighting template having a LCD adapted to reproduce video output, wherein the lighting template may be placed inside or in front of a light source so that by controlling the video output the texture of the projected light may be manipulated.
Lighting designers use gobos, which are physical stencil or templates that are placed inside or in front of a light source, to control the shape of the emitted light. Lighting designers are limited, however, by the expense of glass gobos, which generally offer the highest image fidelity but are the most fragile, and the labor it takes to manually change the gobos in standard theatrical lights in order to create varying lighting effects.
Furthermore, currently, to animate gobos there are only limited mechanical ways of doing so, in part because of the limited kinds of projectors available that afford an organic feel. Specifically, the gobo is placed in the focal plane of a lantern (generally an ellipsoidal reflector spotlight) by inserting the gobo in an accessory slot thereof, upside-down and back-to-front. The desired pattern is then projected right-side up by the lantern onto whatever surface it is pointed at. As a result, current gobos or lighting accessories require many moving parts to animate the imagery of the gobo(s), which in turn limits lighting designer's ability to create visually because of the labor required to change gobos and other lighting accessories to animate lighting designs.
As can be seen, there is a need for a lighting template used with standard theatrical lights, such as an ellipsoidal reflector spotlight, wherein the lighting template contains a LCD adapted to receive and reproduce video content thereon. Thereby a lighting designer is enabled to manipulate the projected light by changing the video content being reproduced by the LCD, allowing unlimited ways of manipulating the light through controlling the video content. Furthermore, standard theatrical lighting units can also be used to affordably create animated projections.